Turning on the radio can be a very serendipitous experience sometimes, can't it? I was driving in the car and clicked on to our local NPR station. The audio clip (linked below Tim's letter in the right column) was playing. It's an excellent little piece and fits perfectly into the "Love Letters from Vlietnam" Hubs. I was stuck by the officer's comment stating that he tries to discourage couples from marrying before deployment. In 1969, I had met my husband-to-be only 6 months before he went into the Army. Of course, we were madly in love, and we wanted to be married before he left for Vietnam (ah, the romance of it all, you know.) I would have changed nothing about our decision, but still I wonder about our outcome of our lives if we had chosen otherwise.

Relationships - War or No War

There are always superfluous reasons why people fall in love or fall out of love. Actually, maybe falling in or out of love is always caused by reasons outside of the falling in or out aspect. Maybe we just finished high school and are afraid of taking on four years of college or don't know why we should. Perhaps a parent is ill or has died. If we're older, maybe we're going through a 40's life crisis, or as in the case of Tim, maybe we're going off to war.

Surely we wouldn't want to erase those subconscious reasons that maybe the true cause one of the greatest experiences of our lifetime - that magical time when we realize that someone outside of our family loves everything about us. That time in our lives could, in fact, be a definition of heaven. But the question remains: Would we feel the same way about the person with whom we're falling in love outside of the critical circumstances that are happening simultaneously?

Ha! And you thought I had an answer! I don't, except to say, particularly in case of the "falling out" aspect, a person must take an honest, analytical look at the circumstances surrounding their feelings of falling out of love with one person and in love with another. And if there are children involved, it's imperative that one does examine the circumstances. In one situation I know of, the wife's parents both passed away within a year of each other through cancer. Her reaction? She decided that it was her marriage to a wonderful man that wasn't working. The effects of that decision were catastrophic to the husband and the children who now were left with the angst of divorce.

So after all is said and done, I guess I do have advise. It's not the advise of a psychologist or psychiatrist, but from a mere observer of life. With that caveat in mind, I would say to you, dear reader, that if you are in love (or falling out of love for that matter)...wait. Wait until the life circumstance - your midlife crisis, your fear of a new job or school, your hurt over a recent breakup - has passed. Water, when boiled, turns into steam. If you fall in love with the steam, will you love the steam after it condenses on the window and becomes water again? It is when we see a substance in all forms and with and without extraneous outward pressures that we understand nature of the substance. Perhaps the same is true of people.